Ethnic and cultural diversity within the UK has ensured that English courts regularly have to resolve cultural conflicts. This paper concentrates on cultural conflicts in the courts where there is an international dimension to this issue and where persons not resident in the UK seek the help of the English courts. The paper does this by reference to two areas of law, asylum and child abduction, which also allows a comparison between the approach to human rights by judges in the public and private law spheres. The paper aims to highlight the in consistency of the approach among judges in child abduction cases, where the role of human rights is unclear. It contrasts this with the judicial approach in asylum cases and English law in general, where we argue human rights are increasingly influencing the attitudes to various practices justified on a cultural or religious basis.

The English jury has recently been undergoing various alterations. These changes have their roots in assumptions, often not clearly identified, about the nature and purpose of the jury within the criminal justice system. Once the purpose and ideals of the jury system are identified, and there may be arguments about what they are, it becomes apparent that there may be a conflict about how they should be put into practice. The state and its agencies may take one view whilst others may differ. An example of one such conflict is the controversy over the newly discovered practice of ‘jury vetting’.

In company law usually the difficulties in determining whether a putative contractual obligation is binding on the company are matters of agency. The issue is whether the person who purported to commit the company to the contract had the requisite authority under the common law rules of agency as modified for companies by statute. At one time it was necessary also to consider whether the contract was beyond the capacity of the company under the ultra vires doctrine, which limited the capacity of the company to the range of business activities defined in the objects clause of its memorandum. Now, following the Companies Act 1989, the capacity of the company is no longer limited in this way to a certain range of activities.

Socio-legal scholarship in contract maintains that the classical law is ineffective in regulating commercial agreements, and that the law should be more attentive to the role played by relational norms of cooperation and implicit understandings in business dealings. This paper explores the extent to which the parties' own narratives about their business relationship, as presented to a judge through testimony, can be both a source of information to judges about how business is conducted and a corrective to the classical contract law mindset, which favours the operation of individualist over cooperative norms in the resolution of commercial disputes. The paper examines a body of ‘law and narrative’ scholarship which underlines narrative's power to subvert traditional legal norms. It also considers some of the difficulties with relying on party narratives as evidence of the implicit dimensions of commercial agreements, but concludes that such narratives may have a role to play in the development of a more relationally constituted contract law and are thus worthy of closer scrutiny.

At common law, any improvements made by a tenant (unless classified as ‘tenants’ fixtures' and, thereby, removable) form part of the freehold and, at the end of the lease, must remain for the reversioner. Subject to the law of waste and to any contrary stipulation in the lease, the tenant remains free to carry out improvements, but is not entitled to compensation. This common law approach can be viewed as a potential benefit to landlords when the improvement adds to the value of the reversion. It may, however, stand as a disincentive to tenants who might otherwise have effected improvements to their properties. It has fallen to Parliament to redress what is widely regarded as this lack of equity.

This paper focuses on the potential impact of the statutory authority defence on HS2 once the line is put into operation. The defence was forged in the heat of the railway revolution. It protects operators from liability in nuisance in respect of certain harms resulting from exercising the statutory powers under which the scheme is authorised. However, the nineteenth century case-law established that the defence would only operate in respect of harms that are the inevitable consequence of using those powers. In common with its Victorian forebears, the HS2 project has been authorised by way of an Act of Parliament. Arguably, the HS2 Act is one of the longest, most detailed and highly scrutinised pieces of legislation in history. Nevertheless, it is argued that the scheme may cause uncompensated losses that are not inevitable. In this respect, common law actions may yet have an important role to play.

International law, as expressed in treaties and in customary law, is of growing importance in municipal jurisdictions throughout the world. Some barriers to the use of international law in national courts are identified. Occasionally, they include scepticism and even hostility about this body of law. However, the past 60 years have witnessed a remarkable change in judicial attitudes in final courts in most Commonwealth countries.

In the UK, the impact of Europe has helped create an ‘incoming tide’. In South Africa, India and Canada, constitutional provisions have stimulated the change. New Zealand is now affected by its Bill of Rights Act. But, in Australia, none of these forces was available and decisional authority adhered for decades to strict dualism.

The changing pace of utilisation of international law in the UK and Australia are described. In the UK, the Human Rights Act 1998 now consolidates a trend already happening in the courts. In Australia, the Mabo decision in 1992 effectively endorsed the Bangalore Principles on the municipal application of international human rights norms. This paper describes the contrasting case-law. In the foregoing countries, it concludes with a response to criticisms of judicial utilisation of international law and a suggestion of the proper jurisprudential basis that can be identified to sustain a judicial process that is now well advanced in the countries surveyed.

‘Today, therefore, the controlling factor in determining whether the exercise of a prerogative power is subject to judicial review is not its source but its subject matter.’ So uttered Lord Scarman, expressing the view of the majority of the House of Lords in Council of Civil Service Unions v Minister for the Civil Service (the GCHQ case). The Attorney General, in deciding whether to institute proceedings for the enforcement ofa public right, exercises a power vested in him by virtue of the royal prerogative. This power, it was previously held, was ‘absolute and non-reviewable’. The question now arises as to whether the Attorney General’s discretionary powers are embraced within that category of prerogative powers whose subject matter renders them amenable to judicial review, or whether they remain beyond judicial scrutiny.

The problems associated with pre-incorporation contracts are due to the essentially artificial nature of a company’s existence and personality. The existence of a company, unlike that of a natural person, is not something which can be readily ascertained but is a matter of legal formality. There is a good case for treating pre-incorporation contracts as sui generis, but until 1973 their legal effect was governed by common law principles of contract and agency which drew little distinction between companies and natural persons. The result was unsatisfactory and widely criticised, one commentator remarking that ‘it is rare to hear such a widespread and common opposition against any aspect of English company law’. Section 9(2) of the European Communities Act 1972 (now to be found in s 36C of the Companies Act 1985) made a partial reform of this law, but did not deal with the inability of a newly formed company to ratify or adopt a pre-incorporation contract made on its behalfeven though this was a major deficiency of the common law.

In this paper, we argue that clients who purchase commercial sex from victims of forced prostitution should be strictly liable in torts towards the victims. Such an approach is both normatively defensible and doctrinally feasible. Fairness and equality demand that clients would compensate victims, even if one refuses to acknowledge that purchasing sex from a prostitute who might be a victim is a faulty behaviour. Clients profit from the activity of purchasing commercial sex, so fairness demands they will bear the costs they impose on victims who are unable to refuse the contact. Strict liability will bring about desirable distributive results along the lines of sex, class and race. Imposing strict liability will ensure consistency of the English law of trespass and it is supported by several instrumental considerations.

Such strict liability could be grounded in battery, despite the appearance of apparent consent by the victim to sell sexual services to the client. This is so for two main reasons. First, the extreme coercion operated on the victim renders her consent void so that an innocent third party cannot rely on the appearance of consent. Secondly, the client should be considered as having constructive notice with respect to the trafficker's coercion. Our argument is supported by – but does not hinge upon accepting – the insight that the client's behaviour is ultimately faulty.

The tendency of lawyers these days is to deny much of a place to Roman Law and this is reflected not only in a widely held view that since the eighteenth century legal innovation has been so great as to have left the Corpus Juris Civilis a ‘mere antiquarianism’: it is also reflected in the fact that fewer and fewer law schools in the West insist on Roman law as a compulsory subject. Indeed, the number of law faculties or departments in England offering the subject as even an optional course can probably now be counted on the fingers of, if not one hand, then two.

In both the United Kingdom and the United States, there have been a substantial number of copyright disputes concerning the creation of biographical works. Prominent recent examples have involved J D Salinger and Sir Stephen Spender. In many such disputes, the claimant's motive for bringing infringement proceedings is not financial but ‘personal’— for example, to protect privacy or reputation. In this article, it is argued that, when copyright is employed for such motives, inconsistent results can arise. In particular, in such cases, it is demonstrated that the possession of a copyright interest is capable of providing a number of apparently inequitable advantages to claimants whose privacy or reputation is threatened.

The Statement of Standards for University Law Library Provision is a comprehensive and flexible set of standards providing authoritative guidance for law schools and law librarians. It represents a broad and authoritative consensus of views. The Standards were originally drawn up by a consultative group established by the Libraries Sub-Committee of the Society of Legal Scholars in 1995 and approved by the Society after consultation with academic, professional and governmental bodies. They have now been comprehensively revised by a working party of the Libraries Sub-Committee, after extensive consultation, and this revision was adopted by the Council of the Society on 9 September 2009. The Standards themselves are expressed briefly and are designed to be of general application to libraries serving an increasingly diverse range of law schools and law school activities. They are applicable to the academic stage of legal education only (undergraduate and postgraduate), delivered through all modes of study, and are supported by a more detailed commentary.

The reply of Professor Williams to our article ‘Recklessness: the House of Lords and the criminal law’ is interesting and vigorous. We continue, however, to adhere to our original view, and attempt below to summarise our objections to what appear to be his main arguments on the law. On the moral issue, we do not consider that Professor Williams has answered the arguments for ‘Caldwell - recklessness’ put forward by Duff. We find the Professor's philosophical position somewhat confusing. Why is it acceptable to convict those who fail to appreciate an obvious risk because of ‘blind rage’ or self-iduced intoxication, but not those whose failure to appreciate it arises from total indifference to the well-being of others?

We should like to make the following points in reply to those charges against us which seem the gravest.